What are we doing with the DATA?

Marketing Magazine releases a delightful list of predictions each year. And I am a bit of a nerd about these sort of articles. This year is no different, but there was one that specifically caught my eye.

“Data Privacy & Ethics”

Quoting a Forrester’s Report: ‘Predictions 2020: Privacy and Data Ethics’  there appears to be a coming storm of regulators attacking both board rooms and court rooms in their bid to “protect the consumer” from us nasty marketers because we seek to use the data we gather or buy to better target consumers with our horrible offers!!

Accepting that marketers must be the devil incarnate, we had better do something about this - hadn’t we? But how much of this consumer data storm is real and how much is the over-reaction by the regulators? The more I dive into this the more that I have come to accept that it is a bit of both. So, let’s focus, as marketers and get this right from our perspective, then the regulators will have less evidence to present to support their case.

For me, we start at the only logical word that describes what we must do…RESPECT!

The more we work with this word and consider the implications of the using the data that that is shared with our brand, the better.

Consumers can and will start to reclaim their data with the many tools now available to them to obscure themselves from our prying eyes. Their data will be changed, owned and controlled by what they want us marketers to see, not the other way around and that will present all sorts of issues in our desire to present our messaging to our audience.

So, try and respect the privacy or right to be anonymous, where this is possible, practical and desirable. When you can ask permission to invade. Otherwise, all of that money that you invested into your martech will be a waste. Get this right and we will not need regulators to step in. Get it wrong and lose customers, prospects, staff and then wait for the fines from the regulators.

Another area of focus is the allowing of martech to drive comms from the collected data. This is efficient, but the opportunity to send too much irrelevant communication is a real factor in driving a consumer’s to opt-out or complain, even when they have opted-in to receive your brand’s messages. Add the human everywhere you can. Add the creativity and intelligence that only humans can deliver, everywhere you can. Make it personal, but more importantly, make it human.

And the simplest test of all this?

Would you like to be the recipient of the message and would it engage you…if the answer is not a resounding YES! Perhaps consider not sending it out of RESPECT for your audience’s time and preferences. Just a thought…